W7 SZ7 - insane fan action?

There are times the machine sounds like it's taking off - at times where it shouldn't be doing much, e.g. idling on the desktop. The background software running hasn't changed from Vista, but it now seems to be working really hard doing something I have no idea of. I can be sitting beside it and have it going off like a jet engine, and if I approach it and tweak the touchpad the machine tends to settle down. Anyone else experiencing anything like this? Could it be the search indexing?

 

If the lappie is suppose to be idle (ie, hasn't been touched by you for at least 5 minutes) but the HDD and/or CPU is firing up like crazy, most likely Windows is doing something while you are 'not using the PC'.

They can include file indexing, system restore creation, and depending on whether you have installed it or not, VAIO Content Analyzer. Then there are the usual viruses and what not, but I'll assume you don't have any.

Anyways, I personally found system restore utterly useless in Vista and have no belief that it is better in Windows 7. As such, I disabled it as soon as I clean installed my W7. From experience, system restore points are created as soon as windows finishes loading completely from startup. The only good thing about system restore in W7 is that you can now set how much space you want it to use (in Vista, it was 10% and unsettable).

I found indexing is sightly useful, but I don't really search for stuff on my PC since I like keeping organized. For me, there is also the issue of indexing which slows down the PC for several minutes at a time. Indexing is always live; it will index whatever and whenever you move files, delete them, or even just edit them.

Just go to C drive properties and untick the box to stop indexing. Do that all any other partition Windows uses (ie, if you have D: or even E: as a HDD or SSD partition). But mind you, searches will take a long time after that is disabled.

 

Well mine was not as you say in W7 64bit. Then again i nearly always run my SZ in power saver and sometimes balanced mode. I don't know what you're running 32/64bit? I went back to Vista because i found that the fan noise was louder in W7. In 32bit W7 you really shouldn't have problems though.
Make sure that you've installed all the correct drivers.

 

W7, 32-bit. A Vista Upgrade, and therefore I have loaded the stuff I had from a clean Vista install - the only user-installed background task of note is Dropbox, and none of the VAIO media/other software is loaded beyond what I need to make everything work - i.e. control panel, etc.

I think all of of SZ owners know that the fan does spike from time to time, but these tend to be fairly predictable occurrences. I can't see the same pattern in W7, and it seems to spool up much more.

 

Check your wireless adapter settings. They might be set to max power as default. In a day or two you might find that the fan settles a bit.

 

Will do. Thanks. In fact, I'll try turning it off as it's usually docked at the moment.

EDIT: It's not the wireless.

 

Folks can speculate for days as to what this might be. But in the end it will be just that, speculation. If you want to find out what it REALLY is, walk don't run to the Sysinternals site at Microsoft and get a copy of Process Explorer. In a matter of minutes you will know exactly what process or service is hogging the CPU and causing the heat to spike triggering the fan.

Gary

 

On my SZ the CPU usage was no higher than what in Vista but it was still a bit noisier.
For me changing the wifi adapter settings helped but it clearly hasn't in your case.

 

That would be my next step. I was wondering if anyone else had similar problems.